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Scrapbooking

What is a life but a wirebound scrapbook of images? At least that’s what it is during the adoption process. When a mother has decided to put her child up for adoption, she selects the parents by flipping through profile books compiled by the hopeful parents. It’s a quick story of their life, what has been, is, and will be.

The profile books we’ve looked through follow the same path, a letter to the birth mother on why they want to adopt, and maybe a quick profile of each parent (Scott enjoys watching baseball and long romantic walks on the beach). Then, pictures of their wedding, family, friends, and outings they’ve been on.

Its like a first date. You have to be honest, but always put your best foot forward. It’s so tricky though. One couple who spoke to our adoption class were selected because in one picture he was sitting on a horse. It was something they did for fun on a vacation, not really who they are normally, but the birth mom wanted their child to ride a horse someday.

We started going through pictures. We have a really nice one of my side of the family from Christmas, but there is a gun hanging over the fireplace. It was my Grandfather’s gun, hasn’t been used in years, and probably never will be again. It’s purely decoration, but would a mother get frightened by the prospect of a gun at the house? Would a mother select us because she believes in gun rights? These questions will drive you nuts.

We’ve got (around) nine billion pictures to go through. Luckily, at one point I decided that tagging our digital photos made sense, and that is really helping out. When we run across a potential picture, we tag it as a profile pic. When I want to find one of my brother and I, then I can search for that. Those are the things that make digital awesome. The less awesome part is that you can keep way too many pictures. It will take us a while to sort through them all.

Once we gather up the pictures and write nice things about ourselves, then comes scrapbooking. You can’t just put the pictures in a word document, no, you need bordered pages, appealing font, well placed photos to complete the book. This may seem overkill, but it shows that you’ve put a lot of thought and effort toward this, and that you will probably do the same towards parenting.

One thing you must always remember going through this process, is that all the things you have to go through preparing for adoption in no way compares to what birth mother goes through with her decision to place her child. So, if putting 10 hours into a profile book for to flip through it in 2 minutes makes her just slightly more comfortable about you and her child, it’s worth it.